An Imperfect Woman pt. 3/5 (Genfic-pg-13)
Title: An Imperfect Woman
Author: sororexitium
Pairings/Characters: Winona Kirk, Jim Kirk, Sam Kirk, Tiberius and Ainsley and Shannon Kirk (George's family), Frank Slydell (Winona's brother), Chris Pike, Leonard McCoy. George/Winona (past), pre-Jim/Bones, pre-Winona/Chris. Allusions to Winona/OC's.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, underage drinking with consent of a parent, questionable taste in humor, lots of angst and drama, mentions of slash, lots of OC's and me as an author.
Disclaimer: I am so floating through someone else's dream. They are not mine.
Summary: Life after the death of George is an experiment in life. Winona muddles through as best she can, balancing Starfleet and motherhood to the best of her ability and learning that it isn't always enough to love a child. It isn't always enough to try and move on. But in the end, it's enough for her to have lived her life by her standards.
Notes: This was supposed to be my Big Bang, and I was a Big Flop. Deadlines, why are you always my downfall? This is beta'd by my wonderful beta duo, amine_eyes and nenya24 .
Over the next year, Winona went back and forth between her boys and several of Earth’s spacedocks. She fixed up freighters, cruise ships, and even a few constitution class ships. It was nice work, especially the constitution ships. That was where she was actually meant to be, fixing warp cores and wiring and making engines purr like a giant kitten.
But each month that she returned home for a week, sometimes two if she was lucky, the boys changed more and more. They stared at her with guarded eyes, even Jim, who had been her boy for so much longer than Sam had been. They toiled away her time home with chores that Frank thought up for them, speaking quietly amongst themselves with fleeting glances back at the house. Sam’s face grew angry in place of his normal passive face, having already etched scowl lines into his smooth fifteen year old face. Jim’s face grew subjugated, his once bright blue eyes, so much like George’s, dull and getting duller each time she saw him.
Jim’s fights increased rapidly and she was surprised to hear that Sam had helped him in a few of the scrapes, too. The two of them began fights between teenagers of all ages, normally older and supposedly for no reason other than they were there. It was worrisome and each time she went home she would try to speak to them about the fight, but they wouldn’t speak of them. Sam’s angry eyes glared at her while Jim just looked at the floor, his bright blonde hair flopping in front of his eyes.
She gave up on that. If they wanted their fights they could have their fights. She supposed it was better than holding in their frustrations.
In turn, she let her frustrations out through work and a few people that she met at the spacedock. It was odd and she felt strangely dirty for it despite the fact that she usually slept with a few people when she was away from her kids on her missions. It was different, though. Instead of doing it for the physical satisfaction and the ability to connect with another humanoid for a few hours, she was doing it to forget that her children were no longer really hers, to forget that they were strangers in a shared house now.
She was with one of her one night stands when she received a call. She usually didn’t bring them to her quarters, but the person she was with had a roommate on the spacestation so they had gone to her room. He was halfway undressed and she had her shirt pushed up to her bra when the computer started pinging wildly to get her attention.
“Ignore it,” he said, his lips against her stomach.
She pushed his head away from her, fingers sliding and tangling in red hair as she pulled her hand away. “I can’t,” she growled. “It could be important.”
She stood up from her bed, pulling her orange shirt, which Starfleet had randomly decided would be the Operations color, down over her stomach still wet with saliva. She ignored the slight feeling of disgust just as she ignored the whining that came from her man of the night. At her computer station she accepted the call, surprised when a stern looking African woman stared back at her.
“Lieutenant Commander Kirk speaking,” she said briskly to cover her shock. “May I ask how you acquired this console number?”
“Lieutenant Commander Winona Kirk?” the woman clarified, her sharp, dark eyes looking at her disheveled appearance with distaste.
Winona hastily ran a smoothing hand over her hair. “Yes. What can I help you with?”
“I’m Doctor Reese. There’s been an incident with your son, James Kirk. We need you to return to Iowa as soon as possible.”
Her heart stuttered.
“What happened?” she all but gasped, her hand flying out of seemingly nowhere to steady herself against the desk. “Is he okay? Is Jim alright? Where’s Frank?”
Her teeth bit at her lower lip nervously.
Doctor Reese stared at her without pity, accusations in her dark eyes. Her lips thinned in a barely concealed show of annoyance. “Mr. Slydell is unavailable. We have your son here at Riverside General Hospital.” She paused for a moment, glancing away from the screen before she said, “Jim attempted to drive a car into a local ravine.”
Her entire world shattered around her.
She hardly heard the man leaving the room behind her as her hands flew to contact the commanding officer of the spacedock.
+ststst+
Frank was nowhere to be found when she hit dirtside again. Sam was gone, runaway. Her mother couldn’t leave the house due to her never-properly-healed hip. Jim was alone in the hospital.
Her mind raced between everything, a whirlwind inside her head as she tried to scrape together some semblance of a plan to get a larger search group together to find Sammy and a way to get to Jimmy faster. In the cab she had too many thoughts and not enough hands as she thought of all that she needed to get done while speaking with the higher ups about continuation of assignments, leave of absence, and anything else. She spoke to four captains and three admirals and none of them helped her until finally at the end of her rope she yelled:
“Dammit Archer, I swear if I don’t make progress in this fucking conversation, I’ll give you my resignation and we can talk when I have this shit settled! I have a kid missing and a kid in the hospital. I don’t need this bullshit!”
She wasn’t sure if it was the strain in her voice, the anger in her words, or over all just the depressing situation, but when Archer’s old and soothing timbre filtered through her comm. he only said, “Take as much time as you need, Lieutenant Commander. Call me, only me, when you’re ready to continue work.”
She barely had that settled when her cab pulled up to the hospital entrance and she ran in, still in orange shirt and black pants.
The same woman from the video conference was at the nurse’s station with a group of people in suits, one in police uniform. When she caught sight of Winona, her mouth dropped of its own volition and Winona could only imagine why. She probably looked like a freight train had run her over in her long attempt to get back to Iowa and that was probably being kind.
She scrambled up to the doctor, words tumbling out of her mouth before she even knew she was speaking. “Where’s Jim? I want to see him.”
“Ma’am,” Doctor Reese started but Winona cut her off quickly.
“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me. I want to see my baby!” she all but yelled, using the same tone she used when dealing with a few of her underlings.
Reese somehow looked both calm and apoplectic. She held up her hand, “We will get to that, but first we have some questions for you.”
She led a begrudging Winona to the group she had left.
They were two social workers and the sheriff of Riverside police force.
They wanted to take her children away from her. She was not home often enough and Frank was abusive.
Doctor Reese showed her pictures of muscular bruising and x-rays of bones with hairline fractures healed without any medical help to corroborate what she was saying, giving her bold proof that her brother, her own flesh and blood, had hurt Jim.
She felt her stomach drop out. “I never saw bruises,” she breathed out in horror.
For a moment she wanted to say that Jim was a fighter; that Frank had nothing to do with it, but her boys’ eyes were only ever shadowed after Frank came around. Their scrapes only increased after Frank came to live under her roof.
And Frank was gone now, couldn’t be found.
In her mind it all fell into place without her express permission and she realised that the creepy boy she had thrown punches for as an adolescent had grown into an abusive man that threw punches at her adolescents.
Doctor Reese pursed her lips. “Most of these bruises are in the muscles,” she said. “They wouldn’t have appeared on the skin.”
Winona didn’t understand how that worked and she didn’t care. She stared at the pictures and x-rays with horror eating at her stomach, a slow but visceral rage taking over her mind, and fear freezing her heart. They wanted to take her babies away from her. They were charging her with negligence and they were going to take Sam and Jim away from her.
“No!” she argued against them. “No, he is my son! They are both my children! I can take care of them. I didn’t know what was happening, but I can fix it now that I do!”
The social workers didn’t look convinced and even the sheriff looked skeptical. She glared at them with a promise in her eyes until she turned her attention to Doctor Reese. It seemed that after so long, Reese had started to believe her. She looked back to the other three.
“I make mistakes, but I’m not negligent,” she said, angry and scared for the future of her children. “I’m gone so much because I’m trying to give them a future they can be proud of, but I’ll think of something to where I’m with them more. Just don’t, don’t take them away from me. They’re all I have.”
The social workers looked at each other with stony faces. When they looked back at her, one of them spoke with clipped, unfeeling tones. “We’ll be conducting interviews. Until a decision is reached James Kirk will remain under your supervision, as will George Samuel Kirk if he is found.” The way he said that made her heart stutter. “You are not to leave Earth, Iowa, not even Riverside. If there is a breach of this, your children will be placed in the custody of the Federation. Do you understand, Lieutenant Commander Kirk?”
“Yes, yes! I understand,” she told them eagerly before they could change their minds. She looked back to Doctor Reese. “Can I see Jimmy now?”
She nodded. “I’ll take you to his room.”
Reese led her through a set of doors, and when they were firmly shut, she began speaking quietly. “We have him on suicide watch for the next forty-eight hours, and have scheduled him to talk with a psychologist. He says he wasn’t trying to kill himself, but after driving a car off a cliff I thought it best to make sure.”
Winona nodded emptily, processing the information but too shocked by the last day and a half’s events to really give any meaningful response. Doctor Reese watched her for a moment, her dark features crumpling in a brand of worry all her own. She looked like she wanted to have Winona scheduled for a few psychological sessions as well.
Instead, when they pulled up to the door Winona assumed Jimmy was behind, she laid a comforting hand on Winona’s shoulder. “I know this can’t be easy for you…”
Winona cut her off. “Whatever I’m going through, my boys had it ten times worse. Save your comfort for them.”
Doctor Reese nodded and opened the door for Winona. Jimmy was on the bed, a padd in his hand, and bandages covering almost all of his exposed body. His hands all the way up to his arms, his chest, even his chin had bandages. He looked like a mummy half-prepared for his tomb and it made a small noise fall out of Winona’s mouth.
Jim’s head whipped up at the sound and a smile spread over his face. “Mom!” he cried jubilantly, as if they were at home and she had just surprised him for his birthday.
“Don’t act so surprised, Jimmy,” she said with a small brittle laugh.
Doctor Reese shut the door behind her, a nurse that Winona hadn’t noticed following her retreat. She realised that she wasn’t really alone with Jim. They had a surveillance system set up in the room to make sure that Jim didn’t try to kill himself, not that he would. At least, she hoped he wouldn’t. She came closer to her son, her hand reaching out almost of its own accord, until it wrapped loosely in Jim’s longish hair.
Jim didn’t bat her hand away; almost never had except for the rare few times she did it in public. “You look awful, though,” he said bluntly, giving her an onceover that looked chocked full of horror. “What happened to you?”
She honestly couldn’t tell him. The last thirty-six hours had been a blur to her. She may very well have rolled around in a bath of oil and she wouldn’t be the wiser. “That’s rich coming from a boy dressed mostly in bandages,” she croaked, her voice thick with emotion.
“Just some cuts and bruises,” Jim said with a callous shrug, as if it was nothing. It wasn’t like he had just drove a car off a cliff or anything. It wasn’t like her brother, her brother, had been beating him or anything. Then he looked at her and his face fell. She thought that it may have been because he realised everything that she had put him through, or just everything he had gone through on his own, but then his mouth opened and his sweet voice said the most perplexing thing.
“Mom…mommy, stop crying.”
Her hand flew to her face, and sure enough tears came back on her calloused, dirty fingertips. With a growl of frustration she wiped them away only for them to be replaced by more tears.
“Don’t tell me to stop crying, snot!” she demanded in the best ‘mom’ voice she could muster up. “You’re covered in bandages and…and…oh my god!”
Her hand tightened in his hair imperceptibly and she brought the other one up to touch his face, careful of the bandage there. “I’m sorry, Jimmy. God, had I known…”
“You weren’t supposed to know,” he said quickly, cutting her off.
A flash of anger and disbelief coursed through her. “Why the hell not?”
“Sam said he would deal with it.”
“Sam is not your parent, Jimmy. I am.”
He gave her a strangled look and she realized with a cold start that she wasn’t his parent, not really. Though she had promised herself that her children would never raise themselves or play with monsters, it had happened regardless. While she had been off planet, her children had grown up, not with the help of her mother or her brother, but only with themselves and they had played with her when she was home. They had played with the monster that she had become while she was off losing herself in wires and springs and one night stands.
+ststst+
Sam was found in San Francisco, or, really, he had been picked up in San Francisco by Tiberius and Ainsley. Tibby had called, his face grim and disappointed as he relayed to her what she already knew. Frank had been beating on her boys. Sam had told his grandparents all about it, how he had taken the brunt of it for Jimmy and worked odds and ends jobs until he had saved enough money to catch a transport to San Francisco. He went to them, not her.
Tibby asked her if she was coming to get her son, and it was really all she could do not to hang her head with shame when she told him that she couldn’t leave Riverside and why. She tried to tell him that she would send the credits to get Sammy back, but then Ainsley popped her head into the viewscreen and said in that no nonsense tone she had always had that they would be there by the end of the week.
She wasn’t sure how it all happened so quickly, but she found herself constantly biting her bottom lip as she tried not to let everything overwhelm her.
She stayed with Jim when she could and tried not to think of what her life had come to, what her children’s lives had come to. When she was with Jim, she tried to focus on him and everything that he chatted about. He never told her what happened with Frank, didn’t even bring it up. It was like he had never been there, like Jim and Sam had lived in the house by themselves, at least in Jim’s mind. It was like they had been heathen children who raised themselves…
When she couldn’t see Jim, when he was with a psychologist or one of the social workers or Doctor Reese getting a sponge bath, she spoke with Starfleet, with Admiral Archer like he had told her to do. She filled him in on what was happening, and he said that he would keep her off active duty for the next three months, and afterward if it was conducive he would find her something closer to Earth, maybe on Earth.
She had never thought she could love a man who was over one hundred years old as much as she did at that moment.
She sat in Doctor Reese’s office while Jimmy was speaking to a social worker for what had to be the eighth time in the last three days. She knew they had to be thorough, but she felt as if that could have been pushing it to a new extreme.
Doctor Reese was out doing rounds. She didn’t know why the woman had let Winona use her office, instead of making her sit in the waiting room like regular family members. Doctor Reese had been increasingly nice to her over the last three days, her distaste from the day she had called Winona simmering down into a sort of pity.
So, Winona stayed in Reese’s office, in one of the admittedly plush chairs, trying to decide what she was going to do. She kept hoping that she would be able to keep her boys, couldn’t see a reason to go on if they were taken from her. She gave herself no other alternative and so began planning for what she would do when she went back to work.
She didn’t want to leave them at home anymore, not without her anyway. She realized it was probably too late, especially for Sam who would likely hate her even more for deciding to stay now. She wasn’t sure if Archer could get her a job in Iowa, though. Most of the work done dirtside was spread in some of the bigger state. She would have to move, relocate her entire family. That was if Archer could help her.
If not, there was always resignation, though it still seemed like the wrong thing to do. She knew logically that it would be the right thing, but she just couldn’t imagine not working.
She could always…
She looked up at the ceiling, feeling disbelief and anger well up in her chest. “Now?” she yelled at the stucco above her. “You couldn’t have given me the strength to do this years ago?”
No.
The answer from God, whether real or imagined in the recesses of her mind, didn’t shock her. She knew that she couldn’t regret her life. Her boys whether raised by a mother or the monster she imagined herself to be, were strong and they were perfect. Though one was silent and angry and the other was outrageous and possibly bordering on crazy, they were perfect. They were turning into men she felt that she could be proud of.
What shocked her more than anything else in the world was that God, real or imagined, sounded exactly like George.
She closed her eyes and took a deep, deep breath.
She could take her kids into space with her, to the moon colony or a space station. She didn’t necessarily want to, but it would keep them with her. She could make sure nothing like this ever happened again and if she brought it up with the social workers, perhaps it would help them to decide she could keep her children. That was what was important.
As long as they weren’t taken away from her…
She took another supposedly calming breath.
“Shannon,” she said to herself, her voice shaky. She hoisted herself to her feet to walk through the hospital towards the lounge on that floor. She needed her best friend now more than she ever had in the past years.
She found the closest free computer console and entered a number she had never forgotten, not even after twelve years. She sat in one of the plastic chairs, her heart racing. She wasn’t sure how she would be received after twelve years of hazy contact that could barely be construed as useful. It didn’t matter, right now she would get down on her knees if she could talk to Shannon again, just for thirty minutes, if she could just hear her voice again.
“Hello?”
There was static due to the distance between Earth and Tarsus IV, so the picture that the computer would normally provide her was barely visible. It didn’t matter, though. Her voice was still as clear as it had been the morning she had left for Tarsus IV.
“Shannon? Shannon!” she all but yelled, her voice watery. “I missed your voice so much!”
There was hardly a pause. “You should call more often, you evil hag.”
The words were a bit accusatory, but it was nothing that Winona didn’t deserve. Shannon took a deep breath, audible over the transmission.
“Ainsley told me what was going on…” she said tentatively. “Is everyone okay?”
Winona didn’t know if those were the words she would have chosen, and so she didn’t give the question an exact yes or no. Instead, she began talking, spewing the details of their lives for the previous year. Shannon didn’t say much, only the occasional question, but it helped Winona feel more together, like there was some semblance of Earth beneath the soles of her boots.
“Winona,” Shannon started when she had run out of words. “Just breathe, okay? You’re working yourself into a frenzy, and what everyone needs to see of you right now is someone who is calm and collected. You’ll get through this, I promise you. If they get to know the you I know, there won’t be a chance in hell that Sammy and Jim won’t be left in your care. And Ainsley and Tibby are on their way. They’ll fight for you, too. Just breathe.”
Winona nodded, even though it was unlikely that Shannon could see the motion. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Thank you, Shannon. I know you didn’t have to listen to me.”
She could hear the smile in Shannon’s voice when she said, “Even after all these years, nothing makes me happier than hearing your voice.”
“I’ll call more often,” Winona promised.
“You better, you dumb bitch.”
The transmission ended with those words and Winona laughed at them, shaking her head.
She headed back to her son’s room, ready to wait for the social workers to leave so that she could spend more time with him and wait for Tibby and Ainsley to arrive with Sam.
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